Facebook has created a series of suicide prevention measures for members of
the armed forces with profiles on the social network.

The new program allows servicemen and women and their families access to a set of customised features when a piece of content they upload is flagged as suicidal.

The social network’s team of engineers have developed a way of identifying military personnel and their families. This will allow them to refer them to military specific resources, such as The Veterans Crisis Line, as and when their content is flagged as harmful.

Facebook’s new tools are an extension of the suicide prevention effort the social network launched at the end of last year.

Related Articles

“While this is helpful for a military family, there are several specific resources provided to our nation’s military that we wanted to make sure they were aware of at their time of need,” said American military support organization Blue Star Families, which partnered with Facebook for the effort, in a statement. The Department of Veterans Affairs also teamed up with the social network for the launch.

Last March Facebook teamed up with the Samaritans to discourage suicide, after the friends and family of a woman who announced on Facebook that she would be taking her own life demanded to know why no-one helped her.

Simone Back, 42, was pronounced dead in hospital on Boxing Day 2010 less than 24 hours after threatening on the website to take an overdose.

Ms Back, from Brighton, East Sussex, posted on Facebook on Christmas Day: ''Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye every one.''

There have also been reports of other people writing messages before and after attempting suicide.

Friends are urged via Facebook's help centre (www.facebook.com/help) to call the Samaritans if they see suicidal content.

If the content suggests somebody is imminently about to take their life, then people are recommended to call the police.

They are also directed to a Facebook form where they can copy in the URL address of the page where they have seen a worrying status update or wall post. They can do this anonymously.

Facebook will then pass on the name and email address of the vulnerable person to the Samaritans, who will get in touch within 12 hours.

Facebook said their privacy policy allows this information to be passed on.

At the time, Catherine Johnstone, chief executive of the Samaritans, said: ''Through the popularity of Facebook, we are harnessing the power of friendship so people can get help.

''As a friend, you are better placed to know whether someone close to you is struggling to cope or even feeling suicidal.

''We want to remind people that if a friend says that life isn't worth living, they should always be taken seriously.

''Facebook is a part of daily life for so many of us and we must make sure that people online have support when they need it.''

A recent study of 2,891 military family members by Blue Star Families found that 10 per cent of respondents had considered suicide and nine per cent said that they knew a service member who had thought about suicide.

Around 86 per cent of military families on Facebook say that they use the service daily.